LibriVox recording of The Kama Sutra by Vatsyayana. Read by Mark F Smith.

The Kama Sutra, or Aphorisms on Love, has survived at least 1400 years as a dominant text on sexual relations between men and women. Vatsyayana claimed to have written the Kama Sutra while a religious student, “in contemplation of the Deity” - but references to older works, shrewd disputations by Vatsyayana of those authors' recommendations, and careful cataloging of practices in various of the Indian states indicate much more emphasis on kama, or sensual gratification.

Part of the book discusses the 64 arts of love employed by masters of coitus. Learning each of these and when and how to practice them, Vatsyayana affirms, not only leads to the best gratification, but makes the artist a person of great desirability.

Once the means of sexual congress are discussed, the many types of male-female relationships and their proper prosecution are covered. Some of these have small relevance to the modern world, such as how to sneak into the King's harem, but are interesting nonetheless. Others, such as how to get money from a lover, will probably remain useful as long as there are humans in the world.

The translator's concluding remarks call the book primitive; so might also modern women who are told that if their name ends in “l” or “r” they should not be married, because they are worthless. But in tackling the subject of human sexuality, Vatsyayana nevertheless will always attract readers (or, in this case, listeners!).

(Summary by Mark F Smith)

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M4B format available


This audio is part of the collection: The LibriVox Free Audiobook Collection
It also belongs to collections: Audio Books & Poetry; Community Audio

Artist/Composer: Mallanaga Vatsyayana
Source: Librivox recording of a public-domain text
Keywords: hinduism; sex; librivox; audiobook

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: GonzoRanch - - March 17, 2013
Subject: Aaack!!
Ohh bummer. What a book to have problems with the download!

Reviewer: Doomvox - - December 18, 2010
Subject: zip problems
I often see problems with zip files from archive.org, and this file is no exception. At a guess, someone at archive.org is using an odd version that I can't always deal with.

I'm on ubuntu linux, using:
UnZip 5.52 of 28 February 2005

Reviewer: SceneOne - - October 1, 2010
Subject: No Problem With Files
newpolsvoices apparently tried the zip of the book, but it worked perfectly for me! He should find a zip extractor or replace the one he has.

Reviewer: newpolsvoices - - September 26, 2010
Subject: Help
So I really like the reading but when I try to download it, it says 'decompression failed' any ideas??